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1926 Stutz sedan

1926 Stutz sedan

Description

The 1926 Stutz sedan introduced two trends in American automobile design: longer, lower cars, and safety features built into the body. The redesigned "Safety Stutz" was noticeably lower than "high hat" sedans of the 1910s and early 1920s. Its safety features included a low center of gravity, which helped prevent skidding, swaying, and tipping over; a wire-glass windshield, an early effort toward shatter-resistant glass; narrow front corner posts for better visibility; and reinforced runningboard side bumpers. The body sat low on the chassis because a worm-gear differential made it possible to place the drive shaft below the rear axle. Some new-car showrooms featured a 1926 Stutz mounted at a 45-degree angle to show how far the safety car could lean without tipping over. Stutz sales literature extolled the car's "road-adhesiveness" and compared it to "a strong magnetic attraction exerted by the earth upon the car's wheels."

The worm-gear differential used in the Stutz automobile was not widely adopted by car manufacturers, but the lengthening and lowering of sedans continued for decades and had a great impact on styling, manufacturing, and sales. Safety glass became common in the late 1920s and 1930s, but wire glass was replaced by two-layer glass with consolidating material between the layers.

Eugene Fatjo purchased this car in 1926; he lived in Santa Clara, California, and worked at the Bank of America. Fatjo's granddaughters, Katherine F. Harrington and Candace M. Harrington, donated the Stutz to the Smithsonian in 1994.